In Democratic Individuality, I argued that at a high level of abstraction, modern conservatives, liberals and radicals believe that the best economic, social and political institutions foster each person’s individuality. Their differences are largely empirical or social theoretical. All clash with modern authoritarians. I will take up practical issues such as torture and the lineage of the neocons and link them to larger issues in how we conceive a decent regime, locally and internationally.

Reverend Coleman is an old friend from Harvard and national SDS who has long worked in the latin community in Chicago, including with the great fighter Elvira Arellano. *** Here he speaks to the demonization of Barack and Carlos, a resonant linking (demonization is what the “Republican” party, the authoritarian dead-enemy …

In response to the very instructive letter from Andy Reid on the shelding of cops from danger here, including their lower risk of on the job death than lumberjacks and garbage workers, a former police officer and peace activist in Minnesota (one who lets people know his past) sent the following, striking thoughts. He …

eagles circle mountain mist soar slow slow slo ly in and out morningmist high over Dharamsala you are almost calm here wind horses float orange purple yellow laundry gracefully flap balconies yellow banners plant the mountains almost your father made the family listen to Dalai Lama radio and your brother struck …

Bill Tremblay sent me this poem by Dave Anderson about the Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayyad, scheduled to be murdered by the regime in Saudi Arabia. This Inquisitional oil regime – recalling the Catholic Inquisition – is responsible, through the propagation of Wahhabism for most of the so-called “Islamic” terror. It is of course the long …

Bill Tremblay sent me this poem by Dave Anderson about the Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayyad, scheduled to be murdered by the regime in Saudi Arabia. This Inquisitional oil regime – recalling the Catholic Inquisition – is responsible, through the propagation of Wahhabism for most of the so-called “Islamic” terror. It is of course the long …

In Britain and Japan, there were no police shootings last year. In the US, in 2013, there were 479. See here. In “A Better Standard for the Use of Deadly Force,” New York Times, January 1, 2016, Olivia Boykin, Christopher Desir and Jed Rubenfeld, two students and a professor …

I am John Evans professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and author of Marx's Politics:Communists and Citizens (Rutgers, 1980), Democratic Individuality (Cambridge, 1990), Must Global Politics Constrain Democracy (1999) and Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence (Chicago March, 2012).